Cosmopolitanism In Conflict

This book is the first study to engage with the relationship between cosmopolitan political thought and the history of global conflicts. Accompanied by visual material ranging from critical battle painting to the photographic representation of ruins, it showcases established as well as emerging interdisciplinary scholarship in global political thought and cultural history. Touching on the progressive globalization of conflicts between the eighteenth and the twentieth century, including the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years’ War, the Napoleonic wars, the two World Wars, as well as seemingly ‘internal’ civil wars in eastern Europe’s imperial frontiers, it shows how these conflicts produced new zones of cultural contact. The authors build on a rich foundation of unpublished sources drawn from public institutions as well as private archives, allowing them to shed new light on the British, Russian, German, Ottoman, American, and transnational history of international thought and political engagement.

The term cosmopolitan is increasingly used within different social, cultural and political settings, including academia, popular media and national politics. However those who invoke the cosmopolitan project rarely ask whose experience, understanding, or vision of cosmopolitanism is being described and for whose purposes? In response, this volume assembles contributors from different disciplines and theoretical backgrounds to examine cosmopolitanism’s possibilities, aspirations and applications—as well as its tensions, contradictions, and discontents—so as to offer a critical commentary on the vital but often neglected question: whose cosmopolitanism? The book investigates when, where, and how cosmopolitanism emerges as a contemporary social process, global aspiration or emancipatory political project and asks whether it can serve as a political or methodological framework for action in a world of conflict and difference.

Debates over the ethics of war, economic redistribution, resource consumption and the rights and responsibilities associated with membership of a political community are just some of the major conflicts of principle identified by Thomas Kane which characterize world politics today. According to the author, debates such as these are being drawn towards increasingly polarized positions represented by strongly universalist and particularist moral and political ideologies, such as cosmopolitanism and republicanism. Kane analyzes each of these areas, identifying that the potential for ideologically-driven conflict will constitute the greatest challenge facing scholars and policy makers in the twenty-first century.

Urban Governance Under the Ottomans focuses on one of the most pressing topics in this field, namely the question why cities formerly known for their multiethnic and multi- religious composition became increasingly marked by conflict in the 19th century. This collection of essays represents the result of an intense process of discussion among many of the authors, who have been invited to combine theoretical considerations on the question sketched above, with concrete case studies based upon original archival research. From Istanbul to Aleppo, and from the Balkans to Jerusalem, what emerges from the book is a renewed image of the imperial and local mechanisms of coexistence, and of their limits and occasional dissolution in times of change and crisis. Raising questions of governance and changes therein, as well as epistemological questions regarding what has often been termed 'cosmopolitanism', this book calls for a closer investigation of incidents of both peaceful coexistence, as well as episodes of violence and conflict. A useful addition to existing literature, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of Urban Studies, History and Middle Eastern Studies.

For two decades Bruce Robbins has been a theorist of and participant in the movement for a "new cosmopolitanism," an appreciation of the varieties of multiple belonging that emerge as peoples and cultures interact. In Perpetual War he takes stock of this movement, rethinking his own commitment and reflecting on the responsibilities of American intellectuals today. In this era of seemingly endless U.S. warfare, Robbins contends that the declining economic and political hegemony of the United States will tempt it into blaming other nations for its problems and lashing out against them. Under these conditions, cosmopolitanism in the traditional sense—primary loyalty to the good of humanity as a whole, even if it conflicts with loyalty to the interests of one's own nation—becomes a necessary resource in the struggle against military aggression. To what extent does the "new" cosmopolitanism also include or support this "old" cosmopolitanism? In an attempt to answer this question, Robbins engages with such thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Anthony Appiah, Immanuel Wallerstein, Louis Menand, W. G. Sebald, and Slavoj Zizek. The paradoxes of detachment and belonging they embody, he argues, can help define the tasks of American intellectuals in an era when the first duty of the cosmopolitan is to resist the military aggression perpetrated by his or her own country.

Cécile Fabre defends an ethical account of war which focuses on the individual, as a rational and moral agent, over collective groups of people. She offers a new account of just and unjust war, exploring wars of national defence, civil wars, humanitarian intervention, wars involving private military forces, and asymmetrical wars.

Just war theory exists to stop armies and countries from using armed force without good cause. But how can we judge whether a war is just? In this original book, John W. Lango takes some distinctive approaches to the ethics of armed conflict. DT A revisionist approach that involves generalising traditional just war principles, so that they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents to all forms of armed conflict DT A cosmopolitan approach that features the Security Council DT A preventive approach that emphasises alternatives to armed force, including negotiation, nonviolent action and peacekeeping missions DT A human rights approach that encompasses not only armed humanitarian intervention but also armed invasion, armed revolution and all other forms of armed conflict Lango shows how these can be applied to all forms of armed conflict, however large or small: from interstate wars to UN peacekeeping missions, and from civil wars counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations.

A comprehensive analysis of how globalization has altered political conflict, giving a fresh perspective on the contemporary rise of populism.